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Populism, Heresthetics and Political Stability: Richard Seddon and the Art of Majority Rule

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 March 2009

Jack H. Nagel
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Abstract

Because New Zealand's majoritarian political system presents few institutional barriers to change, social choice theory would predict that it should experience frequent change in governments and policies. Although some periods in New Zealand history confirm this expectation, a striking exception is the Liberal era of 1890–1912. To explain the anomaly, this article applies Riker's concept of heresthetics, the strategic manipulation of decision processes and alternatives. The Liberal leader, Richard Seddon, masterfully exploited four main heresthetic devices that offer enduring insight about how to sustain a popular majority. While extending the scope of heresthetics as an explanatory principle, the article rebuts Riker's normative dismissal of populism. In terms compatible with social choice theory itself, Seddon's strategies can be interpreted as having enabled the will of the majority to prevail.

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Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 23 , Issue 2 , April 1993 , pp. 139 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

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12 In 1908 and 1911, the plurality rule was temporarily replaced by a second ballot (majority-orrunoff) system, and from 1887 up to 1902 the four major cities (Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin) were three-member constituencies; see Royal Commission on the Electoral System, Towards a Better Democracy (Wellington: Government Printer, 1986)Google Scholar, Appendix A (‘The Electoral Law of New Zealand: A Brief History’); and Hamer, David, ‘The Second Ballot: A New Zealand Electoral Experiment’, New Zealand Journal of History, 21 (1987), 97–111.Google Scholar

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17 Labour received 55.8 per cent in 1938 and 51.3 per cent in 1946, and National won 54.0 per cent in 1951.

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19 Oliver, , Story of New Zealand, p. 154.Google Scholar The style and ideology of ‘populist majoritarian’ politics that Seddon and the Liberals inaugurated has persisted throughout the twentieth century. ‘New Zealand's democratic theory is one tending toward radical democracy, based on the idea of popular power … [and] majoritarianism. Society's general will should prevail’ (Vowles, Jack, ‘Liberal Democracy: Pakeha Political Ideology’, New Zealand Journal of History, 21 (1987), pp. 200, 222Google Scholar). See also Mulgan, Richard, Democracy and Power in New Zealand (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1984).Google Scholar

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21 Grimshaw, Patricia, Women's Suffrage in New Zealand (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1972).Google Scholar Two other structural reforms, both in the electoral system, occurred later in the Liberal era and will be treated in a separate paper on the Liberals' demise. Disaggregation of the urban three-member constituencies, which took effect with the 1905 election, clearly had a destabilizing effect by encouraging separate Labour candidacies; and the short-lived shift to a second ballot in 1908 and 1911 failed to prevent the Liberals' decline in the latter election.

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24 Note that Lijphart's characterization applies only to durable divisions between major parties, omitting three other types of issues that can influence voters' choices: those on which major parties agree but differ in perceived ability to perform, those on which they disagree just temporarily and those on which they divide within their own ranks.

25 Miners, among the most militant of workers, were mostly located in rural areas. (Seddon represented a mining constituency.) Conversely, many of the bourgeoisie, especially in country towns, depended upon farmers' prosperity. Thus the correlation between geographic location and economic interest is far from perfect.

26 Totals do not match, because some MPs had more than one occupation and are counted twice; the occupations of eight others are unspecified. For profiles from which these tallies were derived, see Hamer, , New Zealand Liberals, pp. 361–7.Google Scholar

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28 McIntyre, and Gardner, , Speeches and Documents, pp. 201–3.Google Scholar

29 Lipson, , Politics of Equality, p. 200, quoting Reeves.Google Scholar

30 Siegfried, , Democracy in New Zealand, p. 189.Google Scholar

31 See, for example, Kadane, Joseph B., ‘On Division of the Question’, Public Choice, 13 (1972), 47–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Miller, Nicholas R., ‘Logrolling, Vote Trading, and the Paradox of Voting: A Game-Theoretical Overview’, Public Choice, 30 (1977), 51–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ferejohn, John, ‘Logrolling in an Institutional Context: A Case Study of Food Stamp Legislation’, in Wright, Gerald C. Jr., Rieselbach, Leroy N. and Dodd, Lawrence C., eds. Congress and Policy Change (New York: Agathon, 1986).Google Scholar

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41 Grey, who served as British governor in South Australia and South Africa as well as New Zealand, once remarked of Seddon, , ‘I never met a manlier man’Google Scholar (Burdon, , King Dick, p. 106).Google Scholar

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45 Lest this portrait and the account that follows appear too one-sidedly favourable, I should note that Seddon had serious flaws, especially by standards that prevail today. Like many men of his time, he was a jingoist, a sexist and a racist. Though forceful and long-winded. Seddon was devoid of eloquence (a gap in his talents that substantiates Riker's distinction between rhetorical and heresthetical political skills). Despite his admiration for the New Zealander's political strengths, Bryce ultimately concluded, ‘it is a misfortune when a nation's most forcible and most trusted leaders do not represent something more ideal than did Richard Seddon’ (Modern Democracies, vol. II, p. 324).Google Scholar

46 He did not always succeed, however. One of his notable failures led to the enfranchisement of women.

47 The distinction is not meant to imply that micro-heresthetics cannot also have historic consequences. The failure to pass a vital bill, or its passage in an unacceptable form, may bring down a government or fatally weaken its electoral support. ‘For want of a nail…’

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53 Hamer writes that Stout ‘had not been previously known for any great devotion to prohibitionism’ (New Zealand Liberals, p. 115).Google Scholar However, I am indebted to Keith Jackson and Mark Francis for pointing out evidence that Stout had a consistent history on the issue.

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59 Stout continued what Reeves called a ‘curious five years duel’ with Seddon until 1898, when he resigned to attend to his law practice once again. The next year, Seddon ensured that Stout would not return to plague him by appointing his adversary Chief Justice. As Reeves commented, their struggle ‘strangely complicated New Zealand politics, … and is the key to much political manoeuvring with which it might seem to have nothing whatever to do’ (Long While Cloud, pp. 362–3).Google Scholar After Stout's departure, the intense Christchurch prohibitionist T. E. Taylor took up the cause against Seddon, harassing him with intemperate personal attacks and sensational accusations. Nevertheless, when Seddon died, the ambivalent Taylor confessed, ‘I did admire the man. The outstanding feature of his career was his dramatic success. He was incomparably the ablest man who has ever touched New Zealand politics, and his persistency was like death itself’ (Hamer, , New Zealand Liberals, p. 209).Google Scholar

60 Hamer, , New Zealand Liberals, p. 119.Google Scholar

61 Separate prohibitionist and regular Liberal tickets had contested the Christchurch and Auckland districts in 1893 (Hamer, , New Zealand Liberals, pp. 111–12).Google Scholar

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63 By 1908, fourteen of seventy-six districts were dry. In 1910, the law was changed to institute a triennial nationwide referendum. In 1919, national prohibition fell just short of the 60 per cent required for adoption. Subsequently, its support declined sharply, perhaps due to the unfavourable example of Prohibition in the United States, although it was also the case that drunkenness had become much less prevalent as a social problem. See Fairburn, Miles, The Ideal Society and its Enemies: The Foundations of Modern New Zealand Society, 1850–1900 (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 1989), p. 207.Google Scholar

64 Seddon, 's role in 1893–1896Google Scholar was analogous to that of Lyndon Johnson after the death of John Kennedy.

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88 Lipson, , Politics of Equality, p. 134Google Scholar. Lipson allowed himself poetic licence; there were eighty-eight House seats at the time.

89 Burdon, , Julius Vogel, p. 84.Google Scholar

90 As Albert Weale has pointed out, these actions might be considered manipulation of incentives rather than the manipulation of issues implied by the concept of heresthetics. The distinction lies in the size of the group affected by an action. A pure incentive can be given to or withheld from an individual – for example, a job, nomination or portfolio - whereas an ‘issue’ affects a group. The extreme case of distributive politics occurs when there are no ‘issues’ other than individual gain, and the welfare of each participant becomes a separate dimension of evaluation. However, many distributive questions do involve some degree of aggregation, as when the welfare of an electorate or region is at stake. Such questions are more likely to become ‘issues’ in the normal political sense. For example, during the Stout-Vogel and Atkinson Ministries of the 1880s, constituents in several South Island districts demanded to have a railway built across the Southern Alps. Members from this area exploited their pivotal position in parliament to extract appropriations for the project. Its extravagance during a time of retrenchment infuriated the rest of the country. An observer commented, ‘There is no doubt the city of Wellington is in flames from hatred and fear of the south. The men there are so excited they would about knife you over the question.’ See Rosanowski, G. J., ‘The West Coast Railways and New Zealand Politics, 1878–1888’, New Zealand Journal of History, 4 (1970), 34–53Google Scholar, quotation at p. 45. Of course, the principles according to which patronage, nominations and other individual goods are allocated can also become important ‘issues’.

91 Lipson, , Politics of Equality, p. 132Google Scholar. At about the same time, the Liberal government of Italy depended on the similar practice of ‘traformismo, the process by which deputies who were elected as opponents of the government were “transformed” into its allies once they were granted patronage’ (Shefter, Martin, ‘Party and Patronage: Germany, England, and Italy,’ Politics and Society, 7(1977), p. 443).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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101 Richardson, Len, ‘Parties and Political Change’Google Scholar, in Oliver, , ed., Oxford University of New Zealand, p. 202Google Scholar; Oliver, , Story of New Zealand, p. 158.Google Scholar

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103 Dalziel, Raewyn, ‘The Continuous Ministry Revisited’, New Zealand Journal of History, 21 (1987), p. 49.Google Scholar

104 Hamer, , New Zealand Liberals, pp. 126–8, 202.Google Scholar

105 For Seddon, loyalty was a two-way street. He never fired a minister, and in electoral contests, he normally endorsed sitting members (Hamer, , New Zealand Liberals, pp. 204–5, 249, 252)Google Scholar. The possibility that the last added member of a coalition receives as payoff its full marginal contribution plays an important role in game theory as the basis of the Shapley value and its well-known application, the Shapley-Shubik index of voting power. See Riker, William H. and Ordeshook, Peter C., An Introduction to Positive Political Theory (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), chap. 6Google Scholar; Shubik, Martin, Game Theory in the Social Sciences: Concepts and Solutions (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982), chap. 7Google Scholar. Social systems sometimes operate consistently with this principle, as is evident from American professional baseball under the free agent system, universities that pay faculty according to their willingness to test the job market, and the history of New Zealand politics before 1890. All three examples demonstrate that rewarding the disloyal encourages churning of personnel and organizational disequilibrium. Seddon's success in harnessing particularistic incentives to enforce party unity and policy stability shows that there is nothing inevitable about distributive disequilibrium.

106 Burdon, , King Dick, p. 319.Google Scholar

107 Riker, , Liberalism against Populism, p. 192.Google Scholar

108 Riker, William H. and Brams, Steven J., ‘The Paradox of Vote Trading’, American Political Science Review, 67 (1973), 1235–47, quotation at p. 1240CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Riker, , Liberalism Against Populism, pp. 157–67Google Scholar, and Brams, , Paradoxes in Politics: An Introduction to the Nonobvious in Political Science (New York: The Free Press, 1976), pp. 91–111.Google Scholar

109 Hardin, Russell, ‘Collective Action as an Agreeable n-Prisoners' Dilemma’, Behavioral Science, 16(1971), 472–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

110 Hamer, , New Zealand Liberals, p. 202.Google Scholar

111 Stewart, , ‘Introduction’ to Siegfried, Democracy in New Zealand, pp. x–xi.Google Scholar

112 The image of Seddon as the people's servant occurs often in contemporary accounts and in his own rhetoric. The Webbs, for example, wrote that ‘The common people throughout the colony feel that he is working for them — that he is their servant…’ (Hamer, , New Zealand Liberals, p. 199)Google Scholar. After his 1902 election victory, Seddon exclaimed, ‘You are my masters, and we are getting on very well together!’ (Hamer, , New Zealand Liberals, p. 200).Google Scholar

113 Siegfried, , Democracy in New Zealand, p. 100Google Scholar. Siegfried makes this observation in the context of portraying Seddon as a pragmatist who did not worry about socialist ideology.

114 Kadane, , ‘On Division of the Question’Google Scholar; Shepsle, , ‘Institutional Arrangements and Equilibrium in Multidimensional Voting Models’Google Scholar; Feld, and Grofman, , ‘Majority Rule Outcomes and the Structure of Debate in One-Issue-at-a-Time Decision-Making’.Google Scholar

115 Riker, , Liberalism Against Populism, pp. 189, 192.Google Scholar

116 Nagel, , ‘Wets, Damps, Drys, and Wowsers’Google Scholar. Of course, after they became a majority, prohibitionists continued to be thwarted by the supermajoritarian 60 per cent requirement.

117 Hamer, , New Zealand Liberals, p. 46.Google Scholar

118 Burdon, , King Dick, p. 299.Google Scholar

119 Burdon recounts a celebrated example in which Seddon turned a potential disaster into a personal triumph by winning over a hostile crowd. Afterwards, he boasted, ‘I played on them like a pianner’, but in fact he had restored his personal popularity by artfully bowing to their demands (King Dick, pp. 274–80).Google Scholar

120 Hamer, , New Zealand Liberals, p. 206.Google Scholar

121 New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, vol. 90, p. 571.Google Scholar

122 The overall social state achieved in this way may or may not maximize social welfare, as Riker and Brams show in ‘The Paradox of Vote Trading’. When it does not, the policies produced by a coalition of minorities may be normatively preferred on utilitarian grounds.

123 Hamer, , New Zealand Liberals, pp. 103–4.Google Scholar